


His Servant's Return

by terri_testing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 09:40:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5535125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terri_testing/pseuds/terri_testing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A good and faithful servant returns to Lord Voldemort's side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Servant's Return

Lord Voldemort spared a moment's attention for his suppliant's escort.  "Wormtail.  You may go.  Ah, out of earshot, I think."

Then he moved to favor his tardy servant with a cold red glare. "Severus. Do you know, I had rather given up hope of having the pleasure of your company this evening?"  
  
Snape was pale and his hands trembled slightly, but he spoke in a composed voice. "You think me as great a fool as Karkaroff? I thank you for the compliment, my Lord. I waited, naturally, until the headmaster ordered me to return to you as his spy. Oh, excuse me; he, unlike some others, would never compel." Snape's lips twisted. "He sorrowfully told me that I knew what he must ask me to do, and I concurred."  
  
Snape sank down before the Dark Lord and kissed his hem. "I regret to report, my Lord, that your loyal servant Barty Crouch Junior has tonight been Kissed by a Dementor."  
  
Voldemort stared in stony silence; Snape looked up at him and added, "Leaving, of course, no confirmation for Potter's wild story. Which must therefore rest solely upon his credibility, and, ah, that of the headmaster. I had rather understood that my friend Lucius had arranged something of a welcome-back gift for you on that head. Regrettably, Crouch's Veritaserum interrogation had been witnessed only by the headmaster and two of his puppets, so it cannot be taken seriously."  
  
Snape looked down demurely, and then met his master's eyes again. "And I _tried_ to substantiate the headmaster's accusation by showing Minister Fudge my Mark, but I am afraid that that plan rather backfired. The Minister didn't accept it as evidence for your return, but it was taken by all present as evidence that Dumbledore had hired someone he knew to have once been a Death Eater. Which, I fear, rather raised doubts in some quarters as to Dumbledore's, er, judgment. As well as Dumbledore's arrogance and refusal to abide by official Ministry policy."  
  
Snapes lips stretched in a snaggle-toothed smile. "I greatly fear that Fudge has broken with Dumbledore tonight, quite possibly irrevocably. One might, perhaps, send someone to point out to Fudge that should Dumbledore really have thought that You-Know-Who had returned, he'd scarcely take the risk of retaining the services of a known former servant without, at the least, extensive further investigation into that servant's true loyalties. Which Dumbledore, as it happens, felt no need to make."  
  
The red eyes half-shut; the Dark Lord looked at the man at his feet and said softly, "Yet it seems to me that if Albus Dumbledore felt no need to investigate your true loyalties, Severus, logically it follows that I must."  
  
Snape shivered a little and said hoarsely, "My Lord."  
  
"Why, my good and faithful servant, did you never look for me in my exile, to assist in my return? Or do you claim that you did look, and yet failed, where one like Wormtail could and did succeed?"  
  
Snape wet his lips and whispered, "I did not look, my Lord." He shivered again, but met the Dark Lord's red eyes. "I hoped, in my folly, that you might not return in my lifetime."  
  
The Dark Lord smiled thinly. "I am expected to find your candor refreshing."  
  
Snape shook his head. "No, my Lord. It is merely that I acknowledge that trying to lie to a Legilimens of your caliber serves no purpose. Unless, of course, it serves to amuse you. Do you wish entertainment, my Lord?" He slid suddenly forward onto his face and groveled. "My most ardent desire, my Lord, is to prove my devotion to you by dying in your service. Preferably painfully and pointlessly."  
  
The Dark Lord laughed, and turned Snape over with his foot. "Quite a pretty imitation of Bartemius, Severus. I do appreciate your sense of theatre. _Crucio!_ "  
  
He watched with satisfaction as Snape screamed and convulsed. After sufficient time he released him, saying lazily, "That for your impudence."  
  
The young man huddled at the Dark Lord's feet, eyes screwed tight. Voldemort waited until the sobs had turned to harsh panting before he spoke again. "Shall we start this conversation again, Severus? Why did you never search for me?"  
  
He nudged the young man's chin with his boot; shivering, Snape opened his eyes again and met his master's red glare. He gasped, "At first it would have been hard to look, under Dumbledore's eye as I was. Later, it seemed more possible, and I thought of it, I did think of it, thought of reaping the reward of being the one to return you to yourself. But by then, it was clear enough that none of the other survivors were assiduously seeking you. If you returned... I should have infinitely greater opportunity for advancement, but at great risk of Azkaban or death. But if you never returned in my lifetime... in your absence, I was sheltered by Dumbledore: the only threat of death was from ennui. And then later, when I understood about Quirrell--I might be your servant, loyal or not, but I was afraid I'd be made your slave. Possessed as he was. So I chose the coward's route."  
  
He closed his eyes and added in a whisper, "My Lord."  
  
"Then why come here tonight, Severus? Why not flee, as did Igor, or better, huddle behind Hogwarts' wards?"  
  
Snape laughed bitterly. "Which your agents have already penetrated, not once but thrice? Bet my life that your fourth attempt would be less successful? I think not, my Lord. I was a fool not to trust you to cheat death and return as you claimed you would; but my folly does have its bounds."  
  
"A fool and a coward, Severus, and you make no pretense of loyalty. What then are you doing here, if you can offer me nothing?"  
  
"I can offer you--" the man licked his lips and stopped. He shivered on the floor and finally gave forth a flood of words. "Sanity. Competence. My skills, intelligence, and resourcefulness, devoted to your service. I may not be devoted to pleasing you, as little Barty was, but I am most earnestly devoted to not displeasing you again. And I shall not again make the mistake of believing that even death might defeat you. Surely--" Snape's voice broke and resumed. "Surely you must have others who serve you simply from self-interest?"  
  
The Dark Lord reinserted his boot under Snape's chin and lifted it slightly. Holding his gaze, the Dark Lord murmured, "Now here we have sincerity."  
  
Snape shuddered at his feet. "I assure you, my Lord."  
  
"And you think that I might value such service? The service of cravens, weaklings, cowards?"  
  
Snape shut his eyes and whispered, his body relaxing in defeat, "You summoned us, my Lord. When we were all of us, all of us free ones, either traitors or failures. It's for you to say whether we still may offer you services you might value. But if any of my compatriots left here tonight alive, it seems that you must."  
  
He opened his eyes and offered, "Should you prefer my devotion to my self-interest, of course, I am perfectly competent to brew Amortencia. Unfortunately, as you know, the potion has a deleterious effect upon the ingester's judgment. I'd be more like to serenade you in the Great Hall than to serve you usefully. Should you judge that your best use of me is as your short-lived court jester, say but the word."  
  
The Dark Lord laughed a little. "Court fool... but then there's such competition for that position."  
  
"Indeed. Those of your former followers who had congratulated ourselves on our prudence now must find ourselves admiring the greater wisdom of the Lestranges--a curious circumstance, to be sure. It was the utmost folly ever to have doubted your power to return." The young man's face shut, and his body curled about itself in despair.  
  
Lord Voldemort nudged him a last time. "To your knees, then. I find I get a crick in my neck, looking down on you like this." He reseated himself; Snape struggled to his knees, swaying a little.  
  
The Dark Lord looked down upon him, brooding. Finally he spoke. "How did it come about, Severus, that my poor Bartemius was Kissed?"  
  
"The Minister--when told that he was being brought to interview, not some unsuspected Death Eater, but a lunatic Azkaban escapee who'd attacked Potter and caused Diggory to die, felt he needed a Dementor to protect him. The Dementor, I am told, became, ah, overexcited, when it detected the escapee. Minerva McGonagall, who was guarding the prisoner, had no time to try deterring it; it swooped at once."  
  
"And--why, again, Severus?"  
  
"Destroying the evidence, my Lord. Kissed, Barty Crouch is a lunatic who'd spouted nonsense that happened to serve Dumbledore's purpose of maintaining his waning position of power behind Fudge's throne. I'm sure Lucius has been eagerly explaining how he'd been preparing Fudge to break from Dumbledore. Alive, Crouch might have been heard. And the healers at St. Mungo's might have testified that, although insane, Crouch wasn't subject to hallucinations."  
  
"And how did he betray himself, my poor Bartemius?"  
  
"My Lord, doglike devotion may have its attractions, but competence has its place. As does cold-blooded attention to detail and not letting one's emotions run away with one. I assume from the results that most of his activities were planned meticulously by yourself?"  
  
Voldemort tilted his head in assent.  
  
"My Lord, I think I am safe in assuming that you had not instructed him to place the Cup in the maze _with his own hands? "_  
  
Voldemort straightened in his chair.  
  
Snape raised an eyebrow. "Ah. Indeed. I thought as much, my Lord. It had to make him the primary suspect. I can only assume that little Barty could not endure the thought of entrusting the task of finally bringing Potter to you to lesser, unworthy hands. And then, when Potter returned, his jealousy overcame him entirely. He took Potter from the headmaster just so that he could interrogate the boy on how you'd received your delinquent followers."  
  
Snape bowed his head a moment, then looked up and met his master's eyes again.  
  
"My Lord, that's the other reason Crouch had to be eliminated; he'd spent the year raving that there was _nothing_ that he hated worse than Death Eaters who'd escaped Azkaban. Leave him at my back, at all of our backs, once I knew him entirely sincere? My Lord, he couldn't control himself; he proved that. He couldn't wait, find a pretext, keep his cover and his use to you; no, he had to know at once if he'd been supplanted in your favor. He was as jealous as a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, and with as little judgment, but with murderous intent behind the hysterics. He'd have snapped and betrayed or killed others who were useful to you, precisely _because_ they were useful and he was jealous that they had your attention. He needed to be first in your affections.  
  
"My Lord, is it not the case that you suspected as much, that his mania would prove destructive once you'd collected your--less loyal, perhaps, but more usefully placed--followers? Is that not why you sent him to take a job that you yourself had cursed? You neither expected nor desired him to live past accomplishing his task; in silencing him I anticipated your will."  
  
The Dark Lord said, very softly, "You dare say that I would will such a fate on my own loyal servant?"  
  
Snape bowed his head again. "I dare say nothing, my Lord, nothing. Aloud and before others. But here we are alone."  
  
There was a short silence.  
  
"You claim, then, Severus, to know that I had cursed the Defense against the Dark Arts position?"  
  
"The headmaster made the claim. To soothe my wounded feelings, when he brought in that gilded popinjay to teach two years since, refusing my suit one more time. I'd been wondering, of course; no one lasts the year. I'd made the suit in accordance with your original orders; should you ever return, I'd want to have something to establish that I was still, even in your exile, trying to do your bidding, something with which to placate you. But the old man didn't know that, and thought that I truly wanted the position. A great regard for my feelings, the old fool had."  
  
"So Bartemius told me. And that you are jealous of the old man's regard and trust," Voldemort said smoothly.  
  
Snape threw back his head and laughed. "So he _would_ say, my Lord. You, who are a master of the mental arts, know well that the greatest problem in understanding others' motives, is reading into them one's own. I've no doubt that little Barty reported with transparent sincerity that I am to Dumbledore as he himself was to you. Which wouldn't be quite your observation from Quirrell's vantage, but people change. Yes?"  
  
Voldemort nodded, his red gaze fixed on Snape. Snape grinned at him. "Well, it's true enough in its way. The difference is, I know it. What Barty was to you is indeed what I am to Dumbledore. You asked why I didn't choose to try to huddle behind the Hogwarts wards, and I told you, truthfully, that I would not have made the attempt because I knew full well that I couldn't escape you thus."  
  
His black eyes blazed. "I add now that I wasn't offered that option. I told you at the outset, Dumbledore _sent_ me here tonight as his spy. And he knew that if I were unable to satisfy you, I should die, neither quickly nor painlessly. Such is his regard for me, for my comfort and life and soul. I am his tool merely; if I prove useless to him, he withdraws his protection and leaves me to die.  
  
"And he thinks, he reads into me, he really feels, that I should be _grateful_ to him, for giving me a second chance, for allowing me to redeem myself." Snape's grin twisted into a snarl. "You, at least, are mostly satisfied with public deference. _My Lord._ Look for yourself!"  
  
Voldemort availed himself of the opportunity. After a moment he said musingly, "Yet you would have liked to have had the old man's true care and concern, would you not, my little Severus?"  
  
Snape's lips compressed, and his eyes glittered furiously. The Dark Lord laughed. "Yes, I see; the more reason to resent the old man's using that desire to manipulate you. And what is it that you show him, little Severus, that he trusts you so?"  
  
Snape gasped and looked down.  
  
Voldemort said, "No, I must insist, my dear Severus. Show me what you show him." He reached one white, cold hand to Snape's face. One finger delicately, with no pressure, touched under Snape's jaw. Snape closed his eyes a moment, then opened them and obediently, blindly, raised his face to the Dark Lord's scrutiny. After a time the older wizard released him.  
  
"I see. He thinks you a Hagrid. Blindly grateful for being given a place under the old man's protection and care. And had that care ever been heartfelt, it might even have become true. And you hate knowing that. My little Severus. My poor Bartemius was not actually wrong, was he? It's simply that you are, as you boasted earlier, sane. Too sane, at least, to believe in your heart the headmaster's protestations of regard."  
  
The Dark Lord smiled understandingly, and the finger touching Snape's face moved in a light caress. Snape's jaw clenched, but he said nothing. The Dark Lord laughed shortly. "And yet, little Severus, you dare to tell me that you acted against Bartemius solely in anticipation of my presumed desires?"  
  
Snape chilled suddenly. "My Lord. Any time I presume to act outside your orders, I must expect either to be correct in my reading of your will, or to be punished--adequately!--for my error and presumption. You did not recruit me, my Lord, for the purity of my blood nor my political or family connections. I must therefore assume that you have a place among your followers for someone with the intelligence to judge and the initiative to act quickly in your interests. I am--fully content--to be judged by you for my actions tonight. My Lord." His head lifted confidently.  
  
Lord Voldemort leaned forward a little. "And for your other, earlier, actions, Severus? You claim that I should value you for acting pre-emptively in my interests. Why, then, is Harry Potter still alive?"  
  
"My Lord, I make no pretense that I had been acting in your interests before the Mark started to darken. Before then I sought my own advantage; killing Dumbledore's favorite, however satisfying to me personally, might have been injudicious. And by the time I had become convinced of your imminent return and my self-interest in, ah, satisfying you, your will regarding Potter had become ambiguous. Clearly you had introduced an agent into Hogwarts, to get Potter entered into the Tournament. Yet that was an unsure, inefficient way to kill him; it might have been that you had other plans. Indeed, when I had previously thought Black and Lupin your agents, it seemed to be their wish to kidnap rather than kill the boy outright. So I bided my time to judge your true interests, and as it happens, I was right."  
  
Voldemort regarded him shrewdly. "Yet if you thought before that Lupin and Black were my agents, why did you try to thwart them? Even if you then thought that I might not return, such energy seems... misapplied."  
  
Snape bared his uneven teeth in another grin. "The key word is 'try,' my Lord. Once I had firm proof, as I thought, of Lupin's perfidy, why did I not go to the headmaster? Yet I had to appear to try to stop them, or lose the headmaster's protection. So I went alone to the Shrieking Shack and allowed three schoolchildren to disarm me. I confess, I misjudged; I had not expected to end unconscious on the grounds with a werewolf on the loose. I expected them to leave me in contempt, disarmed, in the Shack as they decamped; and I had another wand on my person, of course."  
  
Voldemort's red eyes narrowed. "And Quirrell? Why did you thwart my quest to get the Stone?"  
  
Snape paled. "My Lord knows perfectly well that I did not know that it was you. I thought Quirrell to be greedy on his own account; of course I acted against him!"  
  
The Dark Lord's voice lowered, "And had you known, Severus? You understand, of course, why I acted through Quirrell when I had my own faithful servant there to hand, a wizard stronger, more intelligent, more, he tells me, resourceful...."  
  
Snape's Adam apple bobbed. "It is  possible--that I might have chosen unwisely, had I known at the time. Had I not correctly understood the situation."  
  
The Dark Lord leaned forward. His white hand stroked the kneeling man's cheek. He said tenderly, "Severus... do you know how long it takes to kill someone with naught, no spellwork at all, but only just the _Cruciatus?_ "  
  
Snape shuddered and went whiter. "No, my Lord."  
  
The Dark Lord smiled. "Experiments have been made. It depends, of course, on the native strength of the victim's body. It's usually the heart which gives out under the strain. It is a disappointing fact that the human frame has a physical limit to the pain it can endure. The mind may give way first, but the body eventually follows."  
  
Snape's face was sweaty. He swallowed. "Yes, my Lord."  
  
The Dark Lord leaned further forward and placed his cold hand against Snape's chest. "Fortunately, as you may know, there are charms to strengthen the heart, and to bind the soul to the body. Despite its best efforts to depart."  
  
Snape's heart thudded fast and hard against the Dark Lord's hand. The young man's eyes were glassy as he forced out, "Yes, my Lord."  
  
"This new body of mine, though not as pretty as it might be, has the inestimable advantage of being protected by Harry Potter's blood. Still, it's remotely possible that an enemy might manage to destroy it. But you understand now, do you not, that should that chance to happen, I _will_ still return?"  
  
Snape closed his eyes. His voice scraped thinly.  
  
"Yes, my Lord."  
  
"You claim to offer me competence, resourcefulness, intelligence and to be, shall we say, freshly reminded of your self-interest." The Dark Lord's palm flattened gently against Snape's chest, treasuring the feel of his heartbeat. Both men were perfectly still, feeling the heart fighting frantically against the hand.  
  
Voldemort bent a little more and murmured, "You do understand, do you not, Severus, that should this new body of mine chance to be destroyed, it would be decidedly in your best interests to be the one--you personally, you understand--to find and restore me, and that quite quickly?"  
  
Snape whispered, "Yes, my Lord."  
  
Voldemort's fingers clutched a little, the nails scratching, until Snape reluctantly opened his eyes. Then he smiled at the younger wizard, and his hand moved, very lightly, over the other's torso. "I might, perhaps, misinterpret--think less of your, ah, competence-- should you allow someone else to be before you, next time."  
  
Snape swallowed and said fervently, "I understand perfectly, my Lord. My Lord is merciful."  
  
Voldemort took a moment more to savor the sharp, painful beat of Snape's heart against his palm. Then he drew back his hand, smiling at his servant. "My, ah--mercy, Severus, is fully equal to my faithful servant's devotion."  
  
The yew wand was suddenly in his hand again. " _Crucio."_  
  
  
After some little time, Snape would be able to hear something beyond his own screams. No one ever credited this, but Lord Voldemort did possess patience. When he must.  
  
Riddle waited until he was sure he could be heard. Then he murmured softly, "Just a little--what is the term? _Memento mori._ I hope, I do hope, that we understand each other, now, Severus. You do not, I think, wish to suffer my disappointment again."  
  
Snape managed to focus on him, eyes very black in the white, wet face. "No, my Lord. I may say with all sincerity that I wish never again to suffer your disappointment."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: This one is Oryx_leucoryx's fault; I asked her to give me a reason that Snape could give Riddle why his brandishing the resurgent Dark Mark to Fudge served Riddle's interests, and she DID. So then I just had to pursue the matter.  
  
As to the political implications of Lucius and Severus's machinations behind the scenes in GoF, and their respective welcome-back presents should their Master be reincarnated despite their best efforts, I stole wholeheartedly from Jodel, the much-esteemed Red Hen; she's a far better interpreter of Slytherin plots than I.

 

 

 

 

 

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